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fancoloredglasses · 3 years

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Star Blazers: The Quest for Iscandar (episodes 1-5: The Quest Begins)

[All images copyright Claster Television Productions, Sunwagon Productions, and Academy Productions. Please don’t sue me]

I hope everyone enjoyed my episode-by-episode review of Dungeons & Dragons. I admit, it was fun watching the series, especially since I missed many of the episodes when the series originally aired.

As you can no doubt surmise from the title of this review, I’ve decided to do a review of the entire run of Star Blazers. There are two reasons for this. First, many of my current friends (who didn’t grow up in the region of the US I did) had never heard of the series before I mentioned it to them. Second, I got myself a present for my birthday...

...so now I have an excuse to binge-watch the series!

Now, as you may have also guessed from the title, I will not be doing single-episode reviews, but will instead be breaking it down into “chapters” that will (hopefully) end at logical places in the narrative. The reason for this is quite simple: doing an episode of Dungeons & Dragons every other week (with a 3 or 4 week break between seasons) meant I’ve spent over a year writing the damn thing! At 77 episodes for the entire run, I do not want to commit 3 years writing reviews of Star Blazers!

That being said, let’s dive in...

(If you would like to watch the episodes yourself, KissCartoon has the entire series)

The first two minutes of the opening episode lays the groundwork for the series (I’m going to crib a bit from the history laid out in the DVD’s features to help set the tone)...

By the end of the 22nd century, Earth has mastered manned space travel, but not enough to leave our solar system. During this time, a planet (and race) known as Gamilon had declared war on Earth and began an invasion of the system, bombarding the planet with radioactive meteors called planet bombs. These bombs have covered the planet in radiation and stripped away much of the atmosphere, drying out the oceans and leaving the surface a radioactive husk.

Mankind hastily built underground cities to escape the radiation, but it has begun seeping underground, and in one year, even the underground cities will be uninhabitable.

Naturally, Earth has assembled the combined might of its military to fight the Gamilons, but given the Gamilons are an empire and Earth hasn’t even gone past Pluto, you can imagine how the war is going.

...which brings us up to speed. Earth has assembled the last of its space fleet for one last, desperate battle at Pluto. Captain Avatar is the commander of the fleet.

Soon, the Earth Defense Fleet engages the Gamilons, who have a force over five times the size of Earth’s. The battle goes as expected.

Soon, only Avatar’s battleship and one missile ship remain, so Avatar sounds the retreat. The missile ship (who logged the only Gamilon kill in the whole battle), commanded by Captain Alex Wildstar, offers to run interference so Avatar’s much larger vessel could escape. You can imagine how that went.

During the battle, a solitary vessel passes by the battle, but isn’t a Gamilon vessel. Somehow, despite being all the way out at Pluto, Captain Avatar guesses it will crash into Mars. I think the writers need to learn astronomy.

Within minutes, it does indeed crash on the polar cap of Mars (just how fast was that ship flying?), near an Earth listening post manned by cadets Mark Venture and Derek Wildstar (they let cadets run an outpost unsupervised?) Earth Defense HQ orders the pair to investigate.

While surveying the wreckage, they discover an escape pod that landed nearby. They land to see if there are any survivors, and find...

...the dead pilot with some sort of capsule in her hand. The pair report their findings to Earth Defense HQ, who order them to rendezvous with Captain Avatar’s ship (which only took three hours to arrive from Pluto) Wildstar notices his brother’s ship isn’t there (which admittedly is kinda hard not to, given Avatar’s ship was the only one to survive)

On the way to report their findings, Wildstar encounters Captain Avatar and lays some heavy blame on him for his brother’s death. After offering condolences, Captain Avatar leaves to be debriefed on how the battle went.

After delivering the capsule to the head of Earth Defense, Wildstar and Venture wander through the hospital, where they encounter...

...Nurse Nova, who seems to have a strong resemblance to the alien pilot (though to be fair, most of the women in this show look eerily similar) as well as...

...Dr. Sane (no clue why he’s wrangling a pig in a hospital. A quick note comparing Star Blazers and Space Battleship Yamato regarding this character: on Star Blazers he a jubilant man who enjoys bottled spring water, but on Yamato he’s an alcoholic who can’t put down his sake) and finally...

...IQ-9, a genius robot who serves the role most sentient robots serve in science fiction (comic relief...which Wildstar and Venture prefer, since the other option would be a psychotic killing machine)

IQ-9 manages to eavesdrop on a conversation between Capetian Avatar and Earth Defense HQ about the capsule and for whatever reason (maybe he’s programmed for plot convenience?) decides to tell Wildstar and Venture. Guess he’s not programmed to understand the meaning of need-to-know.

The message is from Queen Starsha of the planet Iscandar, and is hopeful her sister Astra arrived safely (got some bad news for you Starsha...) with this hopeful message: She has the means to save Earth with a device known as the Cosmo DNA. All Earth has to do is come get it! Problem is, Iscandar is in the Magellanic Cloud, a galaxy 148,000 light years away. Fortunately, she’s willing to provide Earth with plans for a propulsion system known as the Wave Motion Engine to help them get there (Why didn’t she just send plans for the Cosmo DNA?)

Suddenly there’s an alert that a Gamilon fighter has been spotted nearby, in the vicinity of the wreckage of the World War 2 Japanese battleship known as the Yamato (not sure why that’s important. I mean, a lot of ships were sunk in WW2) Wildstar and Venture fly out to engage them, but they have mechanical failure and are forced to land, allowing the Gamilon to get away. They leave their fighter (in a radioactive wasteland? That doesn’t sound very safe...) and discover...

...they landed next to the Yamato as the episode fades out.

The next day, we open to word that things are getting dire, with underground cities worldwide going dark due to the radiation. It is revealed that the Yamato is being repaired (from that husk? It would be easier to start from scratch!) and fitted for space travel, but the rebuild refit is behind schedule (no shit! It takes time to scrape two centuries’ worth of rust from a hull) Captain Avatar insists the ship be launched, finished or not, as there’s little time to waste.

Meanwhile, Nova is patching up Wildstar after his crash the previous day when he and Venture are ordered to report to an air car to take them to their next assignment (presumably, though Venture thinks they’re in trouble) They arrive to find they have stowaways in the car...

...IQ-9 (who invited himself, and shows off that he can disassemble himself for easy transport) and Dr. Sane (who’s “trying out a new motion sickness remedy”...a 100 proof one) Upon their arrival to what appears to be an unused section of the city, they look up to discover...

...the underside of the Yamato (she cleans up good!) Wildstar, Venture, and Dr. Sane are paged to take a nearby elevator (those dispatchers don’t miss a trick! They shouldn’t have even known Dr. Sane was there) As soon as the elevator starts, it tilts at an angle. The doors eventually open to the bridge of the Yamato (also at an angle)

They also discover Nova is on the bridge (why wasn’t she also summoned? And how did she arrive first?) Then Captain Avatar sees IQ-9, who immediately volunteers to be part of the crew (I guess the captain could use a laugh or two) He also drafts the trio to be part of the crew, and dubs the crew of the Yamato the Star Force (so we have a nurse, two cadets, the mechanical comic relief, and an alcoholic doctor. That’s one hell of a crew you have, Captain!) Wildstar declares that they’ll finally be strong enough to take on the Gamilons (the Gamilons just wiped out a fleet of Earth ships and you think one ship will be enough to defeat them?), but Captain Avatar tells him their mission is to save Earth, not fight Gamilons (though there will be battles along the way)

Suddenly, the Yamato shakes as the surface is being hit bombed, and a Gamilon carrier is overhead! Gamilon fighters start firing missiles at the surface near the Yamato. The skeleton crew desperately tries to get the systems online as the Gamilons continue their attack.

Above, the carrier gets word from the Gamilon ruler Desslok, who orders the carrier to press the attack, so they descend on the Yamato...

...as the Yamato’s viewscreen shows (because every spaceship in sci-fi since the USS Enterprise needs a viewscreen) Then the main systems come online and Captain Avatar starts barking orders for the Yamato to strike back. Captain Avatar orders Venture to man the helm and Wildstar to take over the gunnery post (isn’t anyone else on the ship more qualified than a pair of cadets?)

At that moment, the ground around the Yamato starts crumbling as the ship breaks free

Gotta say, it looks good for a rusty husk. It turns out the carrier wasn’t expecting a space battleship (they thought they were attacking an underground city) Given the results of the Battle of Pluto, this encounter does not go as expected

After their victory, Captain Avatar makes their appointments official.

Meanwhile, on the planet Gamilon, Leader Desslok is not pleased...

...and is berating his command staff for the loss. You know, given that he’s likely the one who approved most of his generals, he certainly enjoys demeaning their abilities.

We close out the episode with an inspirational speech from Captain Avatar and a montage of shots of the outside of the ship.

The next day, we open on the Gamilon base on Pluto, where Col. Ganz is getting an earful from Leader Desslok. It seems Desslok isn’t taking the threat of a single Earth vessel seriously (who can blame him?), but Ganz requests permission to test their new Ultra Menace Missile. Desslok sounds amused as he grants permission.

...kind of a stubby missile, isn’t it? Given how fast ships seem to travel through the solar system, I predict not only will it be 100% on-target from that distance, but will arrive in a few hours.

Meanwhile on Earth, a call has gone out across the world for volunteers to join the Star Force, and they get an entire crew vetted in about an hour. At this point, Captain Avatar announces that he is renaming the Yamato to the Argo (no real reason, other than the writers just wanna be contrary to Japan)

Later, they hold a parade for the crew of the Argo (shouldn’t they just get on board and take off? I mean, they have less than a year to get there and back! Plus there’s a missile on the way!)

Earth Defense finally detects the missile when it’s about an hour away (so...somewhere near Jupiter?)

Meanwhile on the Argo, the crew finally gets on board. So naturally Captain Avatar takes the time to give Wildstar and Venture a tour of the ship and meet the rest of his senior staff, including Science Officer Sandor (and his fabricator, which he has named the “Dynamic Do-All”, that will allow his to create whatever deus ex bullshit tech the writers come up with to get the Star Force out of whatever hopeless situation they get put into), Black Tiger Squadron Leader Conroy, Chief Engineer Orion, and Radar Analyst Nova (yes, that Nova. Who knew they taught radar operation in nursing school?)

Upon meeting Orion (who served with Captain Avatar since before the Battle of Pluto), Wildstar lashes out about his brother, to which Orion informs Wildstar that the Captain’s son was in that same battle and also didn’t make it back. I’ll bet Wildstar feels like an ass now...

Back on the bridge, the crew is finally ready to actually do something about the Ultra Menace Missile (which the crew identifies by name, despite the fact that this is a test run for the Gamilons and they certainly wouldn’t have told Earth Defense its name)

The ship prepares for its initial launch (despite the fact that it already took off before when it shot down the Gamilon carrier. Maybe it takes more to actually leave the surface?) as the Ultra Menace Missile bears down on them.

...but the Wave Motion Engine doesn’t start. It turns out Venture forgot to turn on a switch. Take two...after a bit of a delay, the Wave Motion Engine starts and the Argo starts to move, but is it too late?

The Argo fires on the Ultra Menace Missile, causing a tremendous explosion!

...but manages to survive the blast unharmed. The Star Force survives another day.

The next day on Gamilon, Leader Desslok continues to demean his hand-picked officers and not take the Star Force (which they call by name, despite the fact that there’s no way in hell they would know their name unless there’s a Gamilon spy on Earth also dying of radiation poisoning) seriously, ordering Col. Ganz to deal with them.

Meanwhile, the Star Force prepare for their first big challenge as they will be attempting a space warp, in which the Argo will near-instantaneously move from one place to another. If they fail, they will vanish and never reappear. They will be warping from Earth to Mars, a trip that would otherwise take months (Wait, what?! Haven’t you been making trips longer than that in a matter of hours the entire series so far? Someone REALLY needs to teach these writers astronomy!)

Meanwhile at the Gamilon base on Pluto, Col. Ganz dispatches a carrier to destroy the Star Force. I’m not sure why Ganz thinks one carrier will defeat a fully operational Argo when a similar ship couldn’t do so when it was a sitting duck. Maybe Desslok is right about him.

A few minutes later, Nova picks up the carrier on radar (Maybe the Star Force just needs whatever engines the Gamilons are using) Unfortunately, all available power is being used to prepare for the space warp, so the Argo can’t use its guns.

Wildstar offers to take the Black Tigers out to keep the carrier busy (shouldn’t he stay on the ship and let Conroy lead the mission? I mean, that is Conroy’s job!) Captain Avatar warns Wildstar that he needs to be back before the Argo performs the space warp or else they’ll be left behind.

Apparently Wildstar is so special he gets his own class of fighter.

The Gamilons send out their fighters to engage with the Black Tigers, and the Black Tigers fare much better than the entire Earth fleet in the Battle of Pluto, not losing a single plane (though Conroy’s fighter is damaged) but tallying a number of Gamilon losses.

As the time for the space warp approaches, the Argo gives the recall order to the Black Tigers, but Conroy is still out there. Wildstar stands on the flight deck and attempts to talk him in (I hope there’s some sort of atmospheric screen over the hangar opening or Wildstar’s dying of vacuum) until...

...well, he made it!

As it turns out the Argo will be in range of the Gamilon carrier about the same time as the ship will be preforming the space warp. The Gamilons fire their missiles just as...

...the Argo vanishes

We are then treated to a fairly trippy sequence that includes...

Captain Avatar going 3D...

Nova going disco...

and Wildstar’s chair floating around the bridge.

Eventually, the Argo appears near Mars a minute later and the Gamilons are confused. Though one has to wonder why they didn’t simply turn around and attack the Argo again. Instead, they return to Pluto to report their failure to Leader Desslok.

(Please note that, while Desslok and Col. Ganz’s crew have Caucasian-like skin tone, his top aide Gen. Krypt has blue skin. Last episode, Krypt also had the Caucasian skin tone. A mistake by the animators or some weird mutation?)

Desslok reveals that not only does he somehow know the name of the Star Force, but knows they’re on their way to Iscandar. That must be one hell of a spy!

Somehow, the act of performing the space warp causes surface damage to the Argo, so the ship lands of Mars to do some quick repairs (not sure how they can land with Bridge #3 on the bottom and no landing gear) as we end another day of the mission.

The next day, repairs are complete and the Argo is on its way. Unfortunately, the ship starts to suddenly vibrate as Venture has flown the ship too close to Jupiter and is being pulled toward it (you’d think a planet that big would be hard to miss) The Argo doesn’t have enough thrust to break free of Jupiter’s gravity due to some issue with the Wave Motion Engine.

As Venture tries desperately to at least slow the Argo’s descent, Nova discovers something on the radar scope...

A huge land mass with its own atmosphere, that they dub a “floating continent”. Captain Avatar has Venture land the Argo (again, how?) while Orion figures out what’s wrong with the engine.

Meanwhile on Pluto, Col. Ganz wonders why the Star Force is on the floating continent. He guesses they discovered the Gamilon base there (well if they didn’t, I’m positive you’ll make sure they do) Ganz orders the base to scout the Star Force (told ya)

Back on the floating continent, Orion reports an energy leak in the engine and starts repairs. Meanwhile at the Gamilon base, a fighter is launched to do recon of the Star Force, which Nova immediately detects. Wildstar volunteers to investigate (again, isn’t that Conroy’s job?)

What happens next is Wildstar and the Gamilon pretty much chase each other around the area until...

...Wildstar is hit! (Told ya you should’ve let Conroy do it) However, it’s a glancing blow and Wildstar recovers, getting behind the Gamilon and chases the Gamilon away before returning to the Argo.

Meanwhile on Pluto, Ganz orders the base on the floating continent to fire missiles at the Star Force.

Back on the floating continent (why do we keep going back to Pluto for less than 30 seconds at a time?) Venture comes up with a plan where the Argo uses the floating continent to slingshot the Argo out of Jupiter’s gravity. And at the Gamilon base...

...Col. Ganz’s orders are carried out as missiles hurl toward the Argo. However, Orion is a master of dramatic effect as he finishes repairs and gets the engines started just in time.

Wildstar wants to take out the Gamilon base, but Captain Avatar reminds Wildstar they need to get away from Jupiter’s gravity. Once Venture gets the Argo into the floating continent’s orbital path, Wildstar suggests testing the Wave Motion Gun on the Gamilon base when they come around, and Captain Avatar agrees.

The Gamilons see the Argo coming up behind and prepare to evacuate as the Argo prepares to attack...